I’m running quite late today, because I’m working on ways to compensate for the my poor vision slows down my ability to work at the computer. I’ve scheduled many of the appointments I will need to prepare for my eye surgery. Tomorrow I have an appointment to with Sarah to get George his new ankle, so I may post no more than a Personal Update.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:26 (average 5:54). To do it, click here. How did you do?.
Short Takes:
From FAIR.org: Ruth Marcus used her Washington Post column today (5/11/16) to present the speech that House Speaker Paul Ryan should give to Republicans in order to disassociate himself from Donald Trump. She has Paul Ryan being somewhat less than honest.
Most notably, she wants Ryan to say:
I have spent my life believing in, and fighting for, the ideals of the Republican Party: limited government, fiscal responsibility, free trade and free markets, the United States’ role as the world’s most important force for peace and liberty. It is not clear to me which, if any, of those convictions Mr. Trump shares.
Ryan doesn’t want limited government; he actually wants pretty much no government. He has repeatedly introduced budgets that call for eliminating all of the federal government except Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the military by 2050. His budgets provide zero funding for the Justice Department, the State Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Education Department, the National Park Service and everything else we think of as the federal government.
As a big supporter of stronger and longer patent and copyright protection, it is hard to see how Ryan can claim to be a supporter of free trade and free markets. As far as fiscal responsibility goes, Ryan has proposed huge tax cuts that would go disproportionately to the wealthy, which he claims will be offset by ending deductions which he has never named.
I fully agree with FAIR, except for the following. Lyin’ Ryan wants big intrusive government to control everything that happens between women’s and LGBT people’s legs. As for Rump Dump Trump, he’s for what the Republican party has supported for years, but they want to keep that support a secret.
From The New Yorker: In what is being hailed as a productive closed-door meeting between two leaders of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump promised House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday that he would try to sound slightly less like the former German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
Speaking to reporters at the U.S. Capitol after the meeting, the presumptive G.O.P. nominee said that Ryan had expressed concern that so many of the billionaire’s public utterances were reminiscent of the Third Reich.
“Paul basically said, ‘Can you help me out here? Can you not sound like Hitler all the time?’” Trump said. “And I was like, ‘Paul, I can absolutely do that for you.’”
As an example, Trump said, “Instead of saying I am going to round up people based on their religion, I’ll say that’s just a suggestion. Just like that, I’m fifty per cent less Hitlerish.”
Andy is reporting straight news again. Ryan’s concern is based only on how trump sounds, and that her not moderate his actual policies.
From NY Times: The director of the F.B.I. reignited the factious debate over a so-called “Ferguson effect” on Wednesday, saying that he believed less aggressive policing was driving an alarming spike in murders in many cities.
James Comey, the director, said that while he could offer no statistical proof, he believed after speaking with a number of police officials that a “viral video effect” — with officers wary of confronting suspects for fear of ending up on a video — “could well be at the heart” of a spike in violent crime in some cities.
“There’s a perception that police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime — the getting out of your car at 2 in the morning and saying to a group of guys, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’” he told reporters.
Mr. Comey was wading back into a dispute from last fall that pitted him against some of his bosses at the White House and the Justice Department and one that roiled racial tensions over confrontations between police officers and minorities.
What a load of hogwash! If cops are doing their job, as required by law, they have nothing to fear from videotaping. Such fear is an issue, only if they abuse their power. Comey is a Republican, a former GW Bush appointee, with a history of holocaust denial, that Obama appointed to show bipartisanship early in his Presidency. OOPS!!
Cartoon:
(Originally posted in 2012)
